Book: NMAP: Network Scanning

I just finished Fyodor’s book and I thought that it wouldn’t hurt anyone reading another review on security related books! So, I’m starting this new category called “Books“. This is where I’ll be posting book reviews. These reviews posted here will be after I’ve read the entire book at least one time, consequently, the posts in this category will not be as frequent as to the others.

Title: NMAP: Network ScanningAuthor: Gordon “Fyodor” Lyon

Now, this book is great resource of information for scanning and network exploration even behind firewalls, IDS etc. Even though it has numerous ‘algorithms’ that a programmer can utilize for anything he might want including scanning techniques, IDS evasion, information gathering, exotic protocol tips and tricks etc. the book focuses pretty much on NMAP and personally I got bored in the last chapters because of this. The first chapters were very interesting because this is where the various techniques used in NMAP were being described. The last chapters were like an extensive how-to with minimal exceptions on some of them.
Definitely I would suggest this book to anyone interested in networks in general but I’m not really sure if I’d do the same for a programmer. I mean, it has many techniques discussed but this is done in -let’s say- 50% (optimistically) of the book. Is it worth to buy a book and just read a few chapters? I don’t know…
On the other hand, it’s a great book for reference on various NMAP features that you cannot easily find on the internet.

To conclude, I’m not a networks’ guru and I don’t think that I am by any chance able to criticize Fyodor’s work, especially when it comes to network security. This is just my personal opinion as a reader of this book.